I'm not a biologist but wouldn't that be a skunk? I'm referring to the tactic of playing dead, like an opossum.

You should go kick a possum before using that phrase again, and see what happens. Be sure to breathe deeply, it's one of the worst smells on earth. They release the stank to make the "playing dead" more realistic.

Pheeeeeeew!

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"A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards."
-George Orwell

You should go kick a possum before using that phrase again, and see what happens. Be sure to breathe deeply, it's one of the worst smells on earth. They release the stank to make the "playing dead" more realistic.

Most of an opossum’s odor comes from a diet of carrion. They’ll urinate or defecate sometimes when they are scared. Maybe that’s what the guy was talking about? They have musk glands but their musk is no worse than any other wild animal, imo.

The people that like to eat ‘em usually like to catch them, pen them up for a couple of weeks, and feed them corn and vegetable scraps …. to "clean them out". They don’t smell that bad and after that, and taste a lot better.
I’m not a biologist either, but I’ve caught quite a few of them (almost always give them away… (not really my choice of meat, and too much trouble for it). Common method of capture is to chase them down and kick them or hit them with a broom handle. It usually takes more than one hit to get it to play dead. Then you pick it up by the tail. They "come to" then, but can’t get to you because the tail is too weak to for them to pull themselves up by it. Then, drop ‘em in a burlap bag or cage… easy.

Oh yeah, the OP question …

any emotion
any distraction
anything in your sights besides BG’s center of mass

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Keep smiling ... it'll just make 'em wonder what you're up to...

On that last, as I read this thread, the discussion of paranoia that led to fire drills and codes where Eskimo thought that fire drills are not important...He thought that a house built to code means no need for the drill. That reliance on a code to save him shows the same kind of thinking as relying on 911 and a presumable near-by officer to save him, or relying on the Social Security sytsem to provide for his retirement.

Besides, I am a builder and know that codes do NOT require an egress window/opening in every room, only the ones where people sleep. Most code provisions are to add a level of safety to the fireman who might enter that dwelling trying to save your sleeping butt and belongings, not to prevent the fire from happening. That is the job of the resident.

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